Ontario Works -- Isn't Working

Ontario Works -- isn't working.

The whole program -- from top to bottom -- needs to be re-thought and re-worked.

A better anti-poverty network of systems needs to be put into place, involving the municipal, provincial, and federal levels, co-ordinated with each other. The Churches need to be involved. The Communities need to be involved.

If Ontario Works -- is going to work -- then people need to be helped onto their feet; not kicked back into the mud.

Around $590 is the top end of what people get -- or at least single people get -- on Ontario Works. These days, that will be lucky to land a person a room and a washroom. Maybe a separate entrance. More likely, a room in a shared boarding house. Maybe a separate kitchen. More likely not. Maybe laundry facilities. Quite possibly not. Maybe a separate shower. Maybe a shower shared with a house full of people.

By the time the rent is paid, what does the person have left.

Maybe enough for a week of food. Or maybe not even.

No transportation money. Walking becomes the necessary mode of transportation. Not all bad -- good for the body -- but maybe not good enough to land the necessary job that could land a person back on his feet -- and off Ontario Works.

No clothing allowance. Another job deterrent, especially if the person's clothes smell foul when they arrive at their job interview. Trying to wash one's clothes in the bathroom sink may not cut it on interview day. The person may have even become immune to the odour they are carrying around with them.

I'm reacting to the plight of a local woman in Newmarket who I have seen off and on wandering the streets, sometimes homeless, sometimes in a shelter, sometimes barely hanging onto a bad accommodation situation, most often the latter. She has a part-time retail job that maybe nets her $600 to $900 per month. The $900 per month was during the Christmas rush. That chopped her OW cheque down to $100 since they deduct half of what you make for the month, and then subtract that from what is her regular $550 a month cheque.

This woman -- if I am trust what she says, and I have no reason to disbelieve her -- came, or rather ran, from a million dollar home, at about 16, and then finally left for good in her mid 20s. Abstract, partial stories of teenage and adult sexual abuse at the hands of her father and brothers have surfaced a couple of times now. I haven't pushed for details but I don't think we are talking about any 'Oedipal Complex' here. Anyway, she won't go back to her family looking for money.

With a dollar in her pocket, and payday over a week a way, not having paid February rent yet, her landlord overseas, possibly using up her 'last month's rent' which she had given to her landlord, things didn't look too good for her. She seemed sincere in her wish to land another part-time job, and to get off Ontario Works altogether. She asked if I could spot her a $5. Call me naive and manipulated if you wish, but I pulled the $5 change from our 'dinner' at Harvey's. She ordered French Fries and a garden salad -- but couldn't or wouldn't eat -- even thought she said she hadn't eaten since last Saturday.

I told her not to expect this on a regular basis. I have my parents to worry about on a limited government pension. I have an Ontario Works tenant at home who I partly subsidize although he helps me with my bookkeeping, and with keeping the townhouse clean. I have another tenant whose Employment Insurance must have come to an end, and perhaps he is paying out of his savings now. He used to have a good 'trade' job -- the operative two words being 'used to'.

Finally, I have an old time friend who I hadn't seen in about 10 or 15 years. He called me up before Christmas and said he was living in a downtown shelter. Since his divorce over ten years ago, things have gone progressively down hill for him.

I asked him why he didn't go on Ontario Works. He laughed, and said 'Do the math. I live at this shelter, have the trust of the workers, get $30 allowance a week, and get cooked meals. I wouldn't get that from an Ontario Works cheque.'

I shook my head and said, 'Whatever works.'

I'd paid for a couple of rounds of beers that night and didn't have much money left in my wallet. I fumbled in my pocket for change and embarrased, partly for him and partly for me, he seemed to have grown partly desensitized to it, said: 'Sorry, but I only have change left. It's the best I can do right now... I wish I could say that I was still making $50-$60,000...but I'm not right now. We're all pinching pennies.'

And we parted company, him going back downtown, me coming back to Newmarket.

The collapse of a big chunk of the middle class.

And the widening of the gap between the upper, middle, and lower classes...

And then there is -- or was -- ORNGE. As our Ontario MPP, Frank Klees dryly stated: "When they took the 'A' out of ORNGE, that must have stood for 'Accountability'."

Neither of my friends want to deal with Ontario Works. Apart from being a social stigma -- Ontario Works -- simply doesn't work.

Most people, I believe -- apart from the social assistance abusers -- are looking for a helping hand that can help bail them out of an emergency crisis until they can get back on their feet, and re-stabilize in the workforce again. Some can't, or won't get it back together again.

However, there is a percentage that can, or would, greatly benefit from a service that does not essentially 'kick them back in the mud' again.

Even if you are a Conservative, we still all need to be as concerned with the people at the bottom of the food chain as we do with the people at the top of the food chain. Our employers and our workforce. They both need each other. If one side collapes, both sides will eventually collapse. Canada will collapse. We see partial signs of this all around the world.

And there is evidence of the possibility of this type of collapse happening in our own back yard -- in Canada, in Ontario, in Newmarket.

We all need to be 'NDP-Conservatives' -- or 'Conservative-NDPs'.

Concerned about ourselves and our own budgets -- accountable for ourselves and our own budgets -- in the worst recession that I have lived through in my 50 years of living in Ontario.

But concerned about others in our community around us as well.

Because we all need each other. And it doesn't matter whether the 'triangle of wealth and poverty' starts to collapse from the foundational base of the triangle first -- and/or from the top downwards. We are all in this together.

Remarks like 'I don't care about the poor'....

And 'I like to fire people'...

Just don't cut it...

And Ontario Works -- isn't working.

-- dgb, February 8th, 2012,

-- David Gordon Bain

-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...

-- Are Still in Process...